<?php
/**
 * <https://y.st./>
 * Copyright © 2018 Alex Yst <mailto:copyright@y.st>
 * 
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 * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
 * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
 * GNU General Public License for more details.
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 * You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
 * along with this program. If not, see <https://www.gnu.org./licenses/>.
**/

$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'Making good progress',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2018/12/22.jpg" alt="Trees" class="framed-centred-image" width="649" height="480"/>
<section id="dreams">
	<h2>Dream journal</h2>
	<p>
		I dreamed my mother&apos;s ex-boyfriend was trying to talk me into taking a trip to Salem, but I really didn&apos;t want to bike that far.
		Apparently, in the dream, I&apos;d biked to Salem before.
		In the real world, I haven&apos;t biked to Salem yet.
		I don&apos;t think I&apos;m strong enough to do that for now.
		I don&apos;t have that kind of stamina.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="drudgery">
	<h2>Drudgery</h2>
	<p>
		My discussion post for the day:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			I forgot to mention the base case in my own post.
			You&apos;re right, if the sub-array is only one item long, we return without doing anything.
			We know for a fact that a list containing only a single item can&apos;t possibly be out of order, so the work, at that point, must already be done.
			We&apos;ve also got to return for sub-arrays of length zero.
			For example, if we try sorting a sub-array with only two items, the pivot point is one of them, and quick sort gets recursively called on one sub-array of length zero and one sub-array of length one.
			Both recursive calls in this case must return without doing anything.
		</p>
		<p>
			Selecting the value with the highest index as your pivot point isn&apos;t a great idea though.
			If your array is already sorted, selecting the final index as your pivot point will cause the algorithm to take O(n<sup>2</sup>) time, as the problem will never get split in half like intended.
			The same applies to choosing the first index.
			If the array is already sorted, it causes the sorting process to execute as the worst case.
			Instead, you want to choose a value in the middle.
			If the array is sorted, the sorting process will go as quickly as possible: Ω(n log<sub>2</sub>n).
			If the array is unsorted, chances are that it&apos;ll still sort very quickly, though it&apos;s still possible the worst case scenario will happen.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<p>
		Aside from all the reading I&apos;ve got to do and all the notes I need to take as I do so, as well as the mostly-pointless discussion assignments, all I&apos;ve got to do this week is one programming assignment.
		Today, I took out the bulk of that.
		I coded and debugged until I had a working array-sorter.
		Then I optimised and debugged some more.
		I&apos;ve got no code left to write, though (hopefully tomorrow) I&apos;m going to need to do a write-up on what I&apos;ve done.
		That&apos;s the easy part though.
		With that out of the way, I&apos;ll be able to focus on my long reading assignment.
	</p>
	<p>
		I didn&apos;t get as much done as I planned to on Wednesday, but I&apos;ve got a decent amount done at this point.
		If I can finish by Monday, I might just take a couple days off to relax.
		I don&apos;t have a shift on Tuesday or Wednesday.
		I mean, I should work on job-hunting, but I&apos;ve been so stressed lately.
		I could use some time to myself.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="identity">
	<h2>Asserting my identity</h2>
	<p>
		Not too long ago, my father wrote to me via email, and we started talking back and forth a bit.
		After a while, he offered to get me something for Christmas, even though he knows I&apos;m not Christian and don&apos;t celebrate Christmas.
		He also said to let him know if he could help with anything.
		I told him I didn&apos;t need any physical gifts, but it would be a load off my mind if he could confirm something for me.
		We talked a while back, and he seemed to accept the fact that I&apos;m not a man.
		I needed to make sure he understood the implications; that we&apos;re on the same page.
		I&apos;m not a &quot;he&quot;, and while I&apos;m his child, I&apos;m not his son, et cetera.
		At that point, he broke off communication and has maintained radio silence since.
		It&apos;s been a little over a week now, and he had previously been responding next-day.
	</p>
	<p>
		So tonight, I get home and find a card from him in the mailbox.
		I think he thinks he can reject my identity without rejecting me my simply ignoring what I&apos;ve said.
		He probably thinks that by not saying that he&apos;s not on the same page, it won&apos;t drive me away.
		He can&apos;t just ignore the problem and have it go away though.
		If he&apos;s not accepting of who and what I am, he&apos;s rejecting the real me in favour of some idea of me he&apos;s crafted.
		Just like my mother currently is.
		I wrote a note saying I can&apos;t accept the card until he&apos;s answered my question, wrapped it along with the unopened card, and taped it to his door.
		That should get his attention.
	</p>
	<p>
		I don&apos;t fear that he&apos;ll reject me.
		If he does, I&apos;ll be fine.
		I do fear though that the card actually contained confirmation of his acceptance though, and I&apos;ve thrown it back at him without even reading it.
		It&apos;s more likely though that the card contains nothing of the sort though, and returning it opened wouldn&apos;t have nearly the effect.
		Just in case, to make sure I&apos;ve gotten the message through, I had to return the card.
	</p>
</section>
END
);
